Christopher Leinberger is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Director of the Graduate Real Estate Program at the University of Michigan.

On December seventh, architect Howard Decker spoke at the Gleason Works auditorium about urban design. “We know now,” he said, “that the physical and social infrastructure that has accompanied the sprawl into our surrounding region is no longer sustainable.” Since I live in one of those surrounding regions (Penfield), I was eager to learn more about this subject so I looked into what planner and developer Christopher N. Leinberger had to say when he came to Rochester to address (as he said) issues surrounding the growing knowledge economy (in contrast to the shrinking industrial economy) and the need to respond to market demands for walkable urban development (in contrast to our present drivable suburbs in the fringes of our center cities). Leinberger spoke at the MCC Brighton Campus on Wednesday, January 26th.

Both speakers were sponsored by the Rochester Regional Community Design Center (RRCDC) as part of their Reshaping Rochester Series.

“Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries,” said Leinberger, “we built phenomenal cities. They were great, walkable urban cities. We, then, introduced the car and – suddenly – we had the option of creating sub-urbanism. And people wanted that. They poured out to the suburban areas and, eventually, over-built them. This recession was predominantly caused by the collapse of housing prices in the drivable suburban fringe.”

According to Leinberger, we now have situations such as:
** As the cost of commuting to the suburbs increases, households are spending more and more of their incomes on their cars. The higher the cost of fuel, the greater the cost of commuting so, as this spiral continues, people wind up working to, basically, support their cars.
** Certain drivable suburban areas have been overbuilt or are built in the wrong locations, resulting in the appearance of suburban slums. These are areas that are worth well below replacement cost so there is no economic incentive to maintain the property.

Chattanooga, Tennessee is one of Leinberger's favorite medium size metropolitan areas thanks to its excellent walkable characteristics and public transportation.

Christopher Leinberger describes himself as a land-use strategist and a real estate developer. As such, he sees the major commercial cores of our cities as net revenue generators. “So there’s a symbiotic relationship between the central city and its neighborhoods,” he says. “It’s not ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ We’re both in the same boat together!” As a Visiting Fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, he says that they are focusing on the fact that the metropolitan areas are the fundamental building blocks of the economy. More and more people want walkable urban places so there’s a real, growing demand for this, as seen in recent real estate developments.

“Ten or twenty years ago,” said Leinberger, “inner city places were for people who didn’t have much choice where they lived. The prices were lower than the ‘grand’ suburbs. Today, there is an actual reversal in most metropolitan areas. The most expensive places to own are now in great, walkable urban places such as San Francisco, Washington, DC and New York City.

Young people want to move to exciting, walkable cities like New York City. There is a pent-up demand among many people who don't want to commute any more.

“In real estate, there are certain uses that are DRIVER uses and there are certain uses that are FOLLOWER uses. DRIVER uses include residential developments where you bring in new residents and, perhaps, corporate headquarters. Transportation is a vital DRIVER. Transportation not only drives development but the system that a community selects will dictate the form of their environment. FOLLOWER uses include grocery stores and supermarkets. They build when there are enough rooftops. Also, good restaurants, shops and entertainment are FOLLOWER uses.

“We must look at where we are today with our urban and suburban settings,” he said, “and, then, decide where we want to be in the future. That means identifying where those places are going and what those places will be like when they are built. Without a great downtown … without adjacent neighborhoods… you’re not going to attract the knowledge workers that now drive our knowledge economy. So it’s important to remember that suburbs and metropolitan areas have to hang together. Or, they will wind up (as the saying goes) hanging separately.”

The Rochester Regional Community Design Center (RRCDC) is a non-profit organization that promotes quality design for creating modern communities that incorporate economic efficiency, a healthy environment and maximum quality of life. The objective of the RRCDC is to promote and educate communities and their planners in order to achieve good design and urban planning techniques. If you would like to learn more about the RRCDC and their programs, you can call them at (585) 271-0520 or check their website at www.rrcdc.org.

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Lou Singer has been blogging about Penfield life since January 2009. Readers may recognize Singer's name from his numerous cartoons published on the Democrat and Chronicle's opinion pages over the years. Singer, of Penfield, attended New York University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in science with a minor in journalism. In 2000, he earned a master's degree in liberal studies from SUNY Brockport.
He worked for 10 years at Western Electric (part of AT&T) as an equipment engineer (designing and installing telephone equipment), three years at Lightolier as a Technical Writer and Illustrator and 33 years at Xerox as a senior technical writer and editor. He was responsible for writing training materials, service manuals and operator instructions plus a quarterly technical magazine for Xerox Service Engineers around the world.